Small animals for experiments such as mouse, rat, guinea pig, hamster and the like used in various medical experiments, verifications and the like have been reared in a well-equipped laboratory animal managing room for sufficient management against bacterial infection to the laboratory animals or bacterial spread from the laboratory animals.
In a prior-art laboratory animal managing room, the laboratory animals are reared in a rack apparatus for managing laboratory animals in order to protect the laboratory animals from microorganism infection such as bacteria or to prevent spread of the microorganism such as bacteria from the laboratory animal managing room to the outside. The prior-art laboratory animal managing rack apparatus include the inventions disclosed in Patent Literatures 1 and 2.
In the animal managing rack disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a cage for rearing a small animal is arranged between upper and lower shelf plates, suspended walls, each having an I-shaped section are juxtaposed on the side on a lower face of the shelf plate, and an air outlet communicating with an air discharge chamber is formed in a rear surface of the animal managing rack between these suspended walls. The rearing cage has a flange portion of an open upper peripheral edge portion hooked by a lower locking piece on the suspended wall and suspended or is directly placed on the shelf plate so that the flange portion and the lower locking piece are slightly spaced apart and accommodated in the animal rearing rack.
On the other hand, the rack apparatus for managing laboratory animals disclosed in Patent Literature 2 has a space portion between the upper and lower shelf plates as a cage accommodation portion similarly to the animal managing rack described in Patent Literature 1, and a cage for rearing a small animal is arranged in the cage accommodation portion, and this invention is characterized in that when the rearing cage is arranged in the cage accommodation portion, a cage upper cover is installed on an upper part on the front face side so as to be close to an open upper surface of the rearing cage while leaving a gap through which air can be supplied, and moreover, on the upper part on the rear face side of the cage accommodation portion, a box-shaped air discharge portion communicating with the air discharge chamber of an air-discharge box device mounted on the rear face side of the rack device is provided, and an air-outlet forming body is attached to this air discharge portion and is configured so that, when the rearing cage is arranged in the cage accommodation portion, the air outlet of the air-outlet forming body advances into the rearing cage.